Up Against the Wall
by flecksofpoppy
Summary: Reno likes to drink at Tifa's bar in Edge. Cloud thinks about the past. Reno/Cloud.


Don't ask me where this came from. I was listening to the song "Look Me In the Eye Sister" by Groove Armada, and for some reason, the urgency of the song just put visions into my head of two characters ripping their clothes off in a movie, or some sort of story. Pretty amazing album. Where Reno/Cloud came from, I HAVE NO IDEA. But here it is.

* * *

><p><strong>Up Against the Wall<strong>

_Say you don't need them_  
><em>But when you don't need them<em>  
><em>You send them off<em>  
><em>Yeah, you send them off<em>

_Do what you think you should do_  
><em>Leave them like you said you would do<em>  
><em>But you never stop<em>  
><em>It's how you are<em>

_Better fight_  
><em>You better fight, yeah<em>  
><em>You better fight<em>  
><em>If you, if you stand up<em>

_Look me in the eye, sister_  
><em>We're just mocked by doofus<em>  
><em>I am a stranger<em>  
><em>Giving it up against the wall<em>  
><em>Up against the wall<em>

_You don't own me_  
><em>Oh, you don't let it be<em>  
><em>Just 'cause you're lost<em>  
><em>Don't cut off your arm<em>

_Before it comes now_  
><em>Before it comes down<em>  
><em>Are you ready for<em>

_Up against the wall_

(Excerpt from "Look Me In the Eye Sister" by Groove Armada)

Cloud talks with Tifa about Nibelheim at their worst moments. Sometimes, when Tifa drinks a little too much (because she only drinks around Cloud), she says little things the way that only Tifa can, says something one snowy evening in winter about how fire reminds her of _things_ in a sentence she doesn't finish. And in summer, she drinks, says _because it's hot_and gives that smile that aches it's so familiar, and Cloud joins her occasionally.

Cloud has never had a taste for booze, although consuming enough of it has its draw. But he's forgotten enough things in his life to not want to forget any more, even if knowing might be worse than not knowing. But memories are something that make people human, and since Cloud has spent a lot of time wondering if he was just that at one point, he avoids more than one beer.

The only time he touches Tifa is to pull her upstairs and put her into bed and he doesn't say anything when she touches his face, and her hair is sticking to her skin in the heat and she doesn't say anything either. And he draws away. And the world stays exactly as it was the day before and the day before that and so on, and so forth.

Cloud lives in memory the way that ants live in a colony. There are pathways that are familiar, and sometimes he digs new ones, but only further in; never out. He doesn't like flat things, flat surfaces, bright sun.

He has dreams that Denzel walks into the bar and it's burning, and he finds Tifa crying there, saying something about stars, and he tells all of them, _get in the well, get in the well, hide, hide!_

The appearance of blue suits is one memory he could do without. But he gets some sick satisfaction out of denying the bald one access to Tifa, serving their drinks up, never kicking them out, but never really looking either. But the other one, Reno, there's something about him that matches up in Cloud's memory. Something haunted, part of the past, part of a Midgar that Cloud remembers being made of memory before it even was a memory.

Midgar was full of _things_and people and stories. Midgar was a place that held all of his own secrets, and he was nothing but an ant wearing his own blue uniform. To this day, he remembers only fragments.

But dust is full of scents and secrets that demarcate the past, and sometimes when he goes out on the plains near ruined Midgar, he'll stay and sniff, and try to catch something familiar.

Cloud is more familiar with the smell of burning flesh than he is with living skin; twice, he's smelled it. At least that he can remember-Nibelheim, and Sector 7. They mix together in his dreams, and he wakes up, and thinks about how he and Tifa should just stop talking about the past. Even though he is the past.

He remembers the smell of flowers too, and he knows that Tifa thinks he thinks about Aeris too much; she's never said it, but he knows. What Tifa doesn't know is that, although Cloud _does_think about Aeris a great deal, he thinks about the smell of her flowers more, about the spiderweb connections that pull delicately between Mount Nibel and that church, small town and sector. Grass and fire.

But they make sense, and Cloud likes things that make sense; probably more than other people. He realizes one day, when he's trying to smell the wind in the middle of a delivery from Edge to a faraway city, that he doesn't want to forget what burning skin smells like, because in some way that he isn't ready to acknowledge, it defines part of him.

He doesn't know why Tifa lets the Turks drink at her bar. But it is her bar, and Cloud rarely feels ownership over anything.

He asks her one day, and she looks frustrated, saying, "Do you not want them here?" And waits, staring at him, looking hopeful about something.

"It's up to you," he says, and turns away. He can hear Tifa mutter something, and she walks down the hall in the opposite direction, her footsteps so loud against the wooden floor that they sound like gunshots.

Cloud isn't confused; he's conflicted. She knows this. She's losing patience. Cloud knows this too, but he's never sure what he's losing, because he's never sure about what he has in the first place. It's easier to just keep quiet, and even that seems to fail him these days.

Reno talks up a storm when he's in the bar, and for some inexplicable reason, Tifa listens and smiles and gives him booze, and her cold eyes seem to urge him on. They talk until they both look like they're going to be sick, and Reno's partner that Cloud has only met a few times finally just stands up. It's the only thing that gets Reno to shut up, and when Rude stands up, Reno's mouth snaps shut and he just follows.

Cloud is curious, because he knows that routine all too well.

Reno likes to tear the labels off of beer bottles when he's not drinking out of a glass. In fact, he actually insists that Tifa hand over the bottle and not a glass, when he's already a little drunk. And he _tears_; never peels, runs his fingers up the sides when the paper is soggy enough to rip off. He leaves damp paper fragments on the bar that Cloud always has to sweep off; Reno doesn't make liquid messes, never spills his drink. He makes messes that have to be swept off lest they scatter to the floor, like dust. Silvery dust from foil labels.

"Cloud. That's a weird name," Reno says to him one day, because Tifa's not there, and although Cloud would normally just stay in the back room and not bother to address the fact that two Turks are sitting there, he's curious, because today Reno is by himself.

"Family name," Cloud says, sizing Reno up. He's already ripped apart three labels, so Cloud switches to whiskey and tells him it's on the house. Reno doesn't even blink, just shrugs as if thinking that he's extra lucky today and is letting fate do its job.

"Family name, huh?" Reno says, and his grin twists his face into an ugly pattern of scars and blue eyes and cigarette-scented breath that Cloud can smell from behind the bar. Cloud has only smoked cigarettes twice in his life: once, as a teenager when some of the local boys had gotten hold of some from The Big City; twice, when he had killed someone for the first time as a private, in his Shinra military blues, and thought it would soothe his nerves like the other recruits, only to find himself at 17 heaving behind a building.

"Yeah," Cloud says, his eyes cast downward, looking for the right bottle under the bar.

He pours Reno a drink two fingers deep and watches the Turk clutch the glass; his fingers are callused. Cloud has heard somewhere that you can tell how old someone is by looking at their hands if you can't tell by looking at their face.

Reno's knuckles are scarred up. His fingers seem to grip the glass harder than necessary, the same way he probably grips his electro-mag rod, and Cloud wonders if he still has that scar right in the center of his chest.

"Reno," Cloud says, eyeing him thoughtfully. But really, he suddenly has the desire to give him a taste of his own medicine. "That name. Where's it from?"

Reno just shrugs, seemingly indifferent as he takes a sip. "Dunno," he says easily, "just sorta...have it."

Cloud re-fills his glass three fingers deep.

"Right," he replies, then looks at Reno. "I suppose it's not as weird as your partner's name."

And Cloud is surprised, not at Reno's response-the stiffening shoulders, the tension suddenly etched on his face, his grip tightening hard enough that the glass looks like it might break-but that he knows beforehand how Reno will react.

"Suppose so," is all Reno says. "Suppose it's not quite as weird as the name Tifa."

Cloud just shrugs, feels something like laughter in his throat that almost twists into something sinister, and agrees.

"Tifa's a family name too," he finally says. Then Reno is smiling at him, the same way he smiles at Tifa; but Cloud doesn't smile back, just stares at him across the bar. His hands are resting on the top calmly; the wood is wet and has the strange embedded scent of alcohol that's been spilled over and over, something that smells like forest soaked with city, something that smells like a tree ruined by drunk late night brawls and confessions and sorrow.

"You've been to Nibelheim," Cloud says finally, calm. But that's all, and Reno just relaxes, knocks the whiskey back all in one motion. "It's a small town. Lots of families."

They don't say anything else to each other, and Cloud re-fills his glass for the third time, then leaves the bottle on the bar.

"Tryin' to get me drunk, Strife?" Reno laughs, barks really; his hands are flat against the bar now, and Cloud looks at them. Part of the ring finger on Reno's left hand is missing, cut off at the first knuckle, a stub not noticeable unless you really look. Cloud wonders if swinging at people with an electric baton requires dexterity, or beating someone to death, but he knows from his own experience that it does. He assumes that Reno is right-handed, and when he actually thinks to watch, Reno lifts his drink with his right hand.

"No," Cloud responds honestly. He wants to watch someone else drink, to see what it's like all over again, entering oblivion. Reno is like a piece of the past in the flesh, sitting there and talking and breathing, unchanged from the moment Cloud first saw him.

"You ever try to send a letter around here?" Reno asks out of nowhere, and Cloud is taken by surprise, especially when the question seems genuine.

"No," he says. "I've got no one to write to."

"'Course," Reno says, laughing a little, nodding, his words slurring faintly. "Ever used to write home?" he asks, and his eyes are luminous staring at Cloud, slightly glazed but open, too wide open.

"Home?" Cloud says, and a smile curls on his lips. He's not sure where it's come from, but it's there, and he wants the world around them to melt away and disappear. So he pours himself a drink, and takes a sip.

Reno laughs lightly, and Cloud laughs with him, and they laugh together. Home. Cloud knocks back his drink; Reno knocks back another, and still, they laugh.

"Home," Reno repeats, and he's laughing so hard he's crying. They're both crying, laughing, tears running down their faces. Cloud's voice is trembling as he pours himself another glass and drains it in one go.

And then Cloud is on the other side of the bar, and Reno has accidentally knocked the bottle off and onto the floor where it shatters with the silvery dust he's created with his restless fingers that tear, and Cloud is pulling off his jacket.

"Why do you still wear this?" Cloud asks under his breath, drops it on the floor and Reno makes a noise. "Why are you still here?"

Reno's hands are exploring and Cloud can feel fingers pressing into his shoulder blades, can't tell that Reno's missing part of one with the heat of their bodies. "I told your boss I felt sorry for him," he adds.

Reno shudders, and his fingers twitch where he's grasping.

"But I feel the sorriest for you," Cloud says, and he doesn't know whether or not he meant to be cruel, doesn't know precisely to whom he is talking.

But he kisses Reno anyway, rough, unpracticed, violent, and if Cloud knows anything, it's violence. Reno's hair there between his fingers, red, hot, and he wonders about all the people that Reno's branded.

"Been a while, huh, Strife?" Reno's got a grin in his voice, wolf-like. "Tifa not givin' it up enough for you?"

Cloud's shoulders tighten and he knows Reno feels a surge of adrenaline. So he counters it, and is surprised that he knows how.

"Your partner busy today?"

Reno tenses. They tense together, and Cloud growls at him. Then Reno's shirt is unbuttoned, and Cloud is looking at the scar as he licks at it. He says, "Remember?"

And Reno nods, and there's still laughter lurking in his throat, and there are still tear tracks down his face, sticking to his scars.

Cloud was always stronger than he looked, and Reno is willing as he is spun around, pushed up against the wall face first. There's a hard muscled body pressing against the lankier one, so many memories; half of them linear, the other half as fragmented and as shredded as the beer bottle labels where words disintegrate under Reno's fingers. Reno's missing pieces, missing fingers; Cloud's missing memories.

They moan together, and Cloud hates him.

Reno's panting, saying _yeah, yeah,_when Cloud pushes his fingers into his mouth. And then Reno is sucking and he's moaning and it sounds strange, and Cloud is sure he can smell ash as he pushes his face into Reno's hair, though it's probably just the cigarettes.

Reno's pants are down around his ankles and he's making strange sounds and Cloud holds him in place, kicks his legs apart. Fingers, slick, everything so slick, and Reno is eager for it, moaning, never saying Cloud's name. Cloud can tell his eyes are closed and it's probably better that way.

And when Reno sinks down and gets on his hands and knees, and Cloud sinks his cock into Reno's body, he has no intention to hurt him; because if Cloud was going to hurt Reno, he'd rather just kill him. Cloud isn't a sadist, even though he's quite convinced that Reno is.

Reno is shuddering, undressed, as pathetic as he was when Cloud first saw him in Healen.

"How long were you stuck under there?" Cloud whispers into his ear as he thrusts into him, and moves one strong hand along Reno's chest, pushes a finger against the scar that he made. He has been one to mold this creature that's in front of him; ugly, guttural, familiar.

"You gonna come or not?" Reno hisses, and then he groans and hot liquid spills onto the floor; Cloud spills into Reno's body, and he holds his hips there.

"Don't move," Cloud says, looking at Reno's back. His spine stands out in sharp relief, his ribs there, his bones, and Cloud wonders what it feels like to wear skin that barely stays on anymore.

"What the fuck do you mean don't-"

"Shut up," Cloud says, not a trace of anger in his voice, his cock still inside of Reno. He looks for longer, looks at his pale skin, the patterns, the scars, his neck and his hair hanging over his shoulder. Cloud sees death, sees what Reno looks like under the shirt, the blue jacket.

And then he lets Reno finally stand up, lets him disengage, lets him pull his clothes back wearing a cocky smile as he stares at Cloud, as if he's finally gotten one over on him.

"Guess I was right," he says, ambles easily back to the bar to take the last few sips of his drink, "Tifa's not puttin' out."

And Cloud looks at him, unsmiling, grim. Just stares at him. And then finally, says, "Go home, Reno."

Reno looks at him for a moment; he is unmoved, but his eyes have always looked dead to Cloud. His fingers twitch. He nods.

"Yeah," he says. He's drunk, but he gathers up his jacket, checks that his pants are zipped completely and buttoned, wipes the sweat off of his face with a bar napkin that he leaves on the floor.

"Which way is it again?" he asks, looking at the door.


End file.
